Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to a system and method for providing anti-replay protection.
Background
Conventional flash devices, such as a memory card or a flash drive, are susceptible to replay attacks. In a replay attack, the attacker—which often has malicious intentions to gain unauthorized access to data or services—makes a copy of the contents of a flash device at a certain point in time. Later, the attacker replays the contents to trick a device providing data or services that the copied contents are legitimate. For example, the flash device contains an encrypted password. When the flash device couples to another device, e.g., a desktop computer, the encrypted password may be transmitted to the desktop computer to gain access to certain files or services.
In this example, the attacker copies the encrypted password from the flash device, and then simply replays the password to the desktop computer to gain unauthorized access to the files or services. As illustrated by this example, the attacker can gain unauthorized access without knowing the password on the flash device or the encryption key(s) used to (unsuccessfully) protect the password from unauthorized use. Using this technique, so long as the attacker can intercept and copy the contents of the flash device, the attacker does not even need to know the contents to launch an attack.